Summary:
We are looking for a fun, professional and clean design. We do not have a logo designed and would be willing to pay extra if the page designer came up with a good logo too. We need an initial front page/home page design for an ecommerce site and then a content/product page displaying how you envision the product pages to look in your design. Just to clarify, we do not need a coded design, we will do the coding ourselves.
I am going to give you a few links to sites that we like and explain the reasons why we like them, and then below that, I'm going to list our specific requirements and hopefully, by the end of it all, we should have something that meets our requirements and looks as god (if not better) than the sites we like most!
Sites we like:http://www.recycleworks.co.uk
We love the friendly, clean and colourful design of this site and if we had to choose a design that we'd most like to look like, it would be this. The colours are brilliant, the layout is excellent, with the categories of products in immediate display so that the moment you log onto this site, you know exactly where you need to click to get exactly where you want to go.
Whilst we love this style, its important to note that we do not want to 'copy' it. Look at the site and get a feel for the overall 'theme' and try to reproduce that in your design.http://www.recyclenow.com
Again, we love the friendly appeal of this site and I think the header/navbar at the top plays a huge roll in this. Also the variations in friendly colours used throughout the pages in the product pages in the information pages and in all the info boxes around the site.

http://www.naturalcollection.com
In terms of functionality and eye pleasing, clean ecommerce design, this website has it. I like the clean logo and clean navbar at the top, but what I like most is, again, the quick prompts on the main page that take you wherever you need to go and I would like this same philosophy used in your design for our site. As soon as people log onto our site I want them to have instant access to the info they need which I will outline below in my specific design brief.
There you have some of our favourite sites and I think the prevailing theme throughout each is the colourful, environmentally friendly 'feel' as well as quick, onle click boxes, info boxes that take users to the exact page they need to go to.
Website Specifics:
Size:
We are looking to make this fit most browsers and have decided that a screen width 1024px is the best to design for so we are looking for a centrally aligned 940/950px wide 'design' but the remaining pixels at each side of the 'design' in a browser should be considered when designing so that the design does not look out of place in a browser with white space at either side or will work well with a repeatable background to suit your design.
Header :-
Ideally we'd like something comparable to the cleanlinness and professionalism of the natural collection example listed above, with perhaps some of the recycle works colour/fun injected into it. We want the logo in the top left. In the top right (or not necessarily at the top right but to the right of the header) we want links to 'register' 'login' 'contact us' 'help' and 'forums'.
Also to the right of the header, or somewhere in the header where it is in plain and obvious site, set out to attract attention, we would like a telephone number to our shop.
We would also like to see the totals for our cart in this sort of area also.
We would like a clean navbar just below the header similar to the one at natural collection.

Navbar:
The navbar should be part of the header or at least flow well with the header and the colourful design and should contain:
1) A search box
2) Several text links that as of yet have not been specified but an example of which could be 'about us' 'press' 'awards' 'carbon offsets' etc.

Body:
The body of the page will be split into two main columns. There will be a fixed sidebar which will be visible on all pages and a 'content' area where products will be displayed or content from content pages will be displayed.
Sidebar :-
This will include links to all the product categories in our cart. These links will all be text-based but a background rollover image/colour/highlight would be desirable. We would also like to see some sort of icon/bullet before each list item.
Also in the sidebar, in their own different box, I'd like to have a 'latest forum posts' box. This will be its own box, seperate from the category box, and could be in a different colour. I'd like to see links in here have a bg colour highlight also.
Below the forum box, I need another box for 'Best Sellers'.
I also need a 'Win a home recycling bin by subscribing to our newsletter' box.
I would also like 2 or 3 more boxes added in case I need to use them in the future for anything else I might think of.

Content :-
This will appear to the right of the sidebar. On the homepage, I would like to have a promo/product box at the top left of the content page. This would ideally be flash at some point in the future but for now I would like a properly designed promotional image to appear in this space (a picture of a stylish recycling bin with a 'just in for March' sales prompt or such, along with some minor product details, a price and a 'more info' button. An example of the sort of image I am looking for can be seen at http://www.naturalcollection.com currently it is an image of an egg except in my design I would like the image to be less high and wider, more like the sort of size of the 'welcome text box' on the same site.
To the right of this image, in the remaining space of the content page, I'd like a box prompt that asks the question: "What can I recycle?" along with a drop down box and a go button, similar to the one you'll see here: http://www.recyclenow.com/what_more…index.html Obviously I do not want to copy the girl and a nicely designed box with an envrionmentally friendly feel would do us just fine (flowers growing around it etc.?)
Below these two boxes, I'd like to have my product categories listed as 'box prompts' in the style of those of at http://www.recycleworks.co.uk. Each box should be independant and if I didnt want to display a category, when that category box was removed, the other boxes would still look good. I'd like 3 rows of 3 (9 categories in total) and these will be:
Can Crushers
Compartment Bins
Built-in Bins
Bags and Liners
Office Bins
Stackable Bins
Compost Bins
Other Accessories
Free Delivery on Orders over Â£100
Below the product categories, I would like to see a half-width box (or perhaps longer if neccessary) displaying news feeds that will come from: http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en…tnG=Search only displaying 5 or 6 of the latest entries.
Footer :-
Below this I would like a footer in the same theme of the rest of the site like can be seen at http://www.recycleworks.co.uk, with a similar sort of display of copyright info etc. but I would rather have it display all the other links to the opposite side of the copyright in the same way as http://www.naturalcollection.co.uk
Special Notes :-
Somewhere on this page, either in the sidebar, content or footer, I need you to include images about secure payment, methods of payment accepted (all cards) etc and all the other usual security related stuff.

Product Page :-
As I said at the beginning I need two pages for this design, one the homepage that I have just described and two a product page that you visualize will fit into this design. Something along the lines of that displayed at: http://www.recycleworks.co.uk/compo…16160.html would be sufficient. Also keep in mind that this page will also be used as the framework for text-based content pages also.
Logo :-
Again, like I mentioned in the beginning, we are willing to pay for a logo too if someone can compe up with a really good one that matches the domain 'home recycling bins' or alternatively for 'easy home recycling'.